(08-06-2015, 09:58 AM)vsheline Wrote:(08-06-2015, 06:39 AM)Rob S Wrote: after first reading this i started thinking back to when i first started noticing problems with my sleep and breathing.
i came up with.... shortly after i had a major electrical shock at work...18,000 volts, 60 amps. it actually burned holes in my shoes and my legs burned from the knees down.
To calculate the heating power (wattage) one multiplies the electric pressure (voltage) times the electric current (amperage).
18,000 Volts times 60 Amps would have been 1,080,000 Watts. You are extremely lucky you survived that, even for a fraction of a second.
He is, and it would have been, but not precisely. A megawatt+ of power would have vaporized him pretty quickly; maybe not if he got instantly blown across the room and the connection was just for the tiniest split second.
60 amps was most likely the potential of the circuit (it was a "60 amp circuit"), and likely not the actual current that flowed through the short, which would have been limited by the resistance of his body. That is quite different than being part of a circuit that dissipated a megawatt of power, even for an extremely short event. There is no way to even guess what the actual current that flowed might have been, since we don't know the resistance, so we also don't know how many watts of heat were dissipated.
18,000 volts at 60 amps even through a straight piece of #6 copper wire (which actually does have some resistance) would be equivalent to a bolt of lightning, or a catastrophic plasma event, something that would be seen and heard for miles. Probably not survivable if you were a part of that short circuit.
For example, if a 1500W microwave oven is 50% efficient and you want to boil 1L of 20C water... 1000mL*80C*4.19[joules--it takes this many joules to create a calorie of heat]=335,200J 335,200J/750J/s=447s=7.45 minutes to boil that water.
If you dissipate 1,080,000 watts in that same endeavor it would take less than a third of a second to do that; the blink of an eye.
Still, not a fun day at work, and I could imagine it might have lasting effects on respiration.
A good friend and colleague of mine was cleaning a cabinet for a 5 megawatt TV transmitter when the interlock failed and he got across that and got nailed pretty good. His son was with him and quickly used a push broom to break him away, but he was "stuck" for a good 30 seconds. He is still working for that company, 30 years later, with no real continuing medical issues other than some horrific scars.
But there is no way that a transmitter tube cabinet with the potential to generate 5,000,000 watts actually meant he was part of a circuit that dissipated 5,000,000 watts for 30 seconds.